Jewish & World News

The Free Syrian Army (FSA), the main opposition group, is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organization with links to al-Qaeda that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar Assad's regime, The Guardian reported Thursday. Evidence of the growing strength of the Islamist organization underlines the dilemma for the US, Britain and other governments as they ponder the question of arming anti-Assad rebels.

Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah are building a network of militias inside Syria to protect their interests in the event that President Bashar regime collapses or is forced to withdraw from Damascus, the Washington Post reported, citing US and Middle Eastern officials. "It's a big operation," a senior Obama administration official was quoted as saying by the newspaper. "The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it's important for Iran to have a force in Syria that is reliable and can be counted on."

Speaking during a meeting with a Jordanian-Syrian delegation at the embassy in Amman, Syria's Ambassador to Jordan Bahjat Suleiman said that Syria is capable of destroying Israel's nuclear facilities with 20 missiles, should Syria be attacked, in spite of the many casualties Syria would incur over such a move, Jordanian media reported Thursday. The delegation arrived at the embassy in order to wish the ambassador and his country a happy Eid el-Fitr holiday and express support for Bashar Assad's regime.

The US military has prepared contingency plans to send special operations teams into Syria to secure that country's chemical weapons stockpiles should they fall from the control of Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday evening.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is pushing for an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but five years ago he was staunchly opposed to the successful attack on Syria's reactor, a new book reveals. According to foreign reports, the Israeli Air Force bombed the reactor in Syria's Dir a-Zur region on September 6, 2007 under a veil of secrecy. Only some six months later US government officials announced that the destroyed target was a nuclear plant that was built with North Korea's assistance.

An Israeli-American journalist was detained by Turkey on Saturday while reporting from the border with war-torn Syria. Roee Ruttenberg, who writes for online news site +972, reported via his iPhone that he and his camera crew had been nabbed by undercover police while reporting on the power vacuum in Syria and the Kurdish divide in the region.

Kuwaiti media is reporting that Tehran is concerned over the safety of the Secretary General of Hezbollah arch terrorist Hassan Nasrallah after the expected fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has demanded that Nasrallah come to Iran out of fear that there will be assassination attempts on Nasrallah’s life in the event that Syria’s opposition takes power.

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The sources said that Obama's order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence "finding," broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.

Government forces in Syria should be held together when President Bashar al-Assad is forced from power, the US defense secretary said on Monday, warning that the mistakes of the Iraq war must not be repeated. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in an interview with CNN during a visit to Tunisia, said maintaining stability in Syria would be important under any scenario that sees Assad leave power. "I think it's important when Assad leaves, and he will leave, to try to preserve stability in that country," Panetta said.

Lebanese newspaper Al-Jounhouria reported Wednesday that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah contacted Syrian President Bashar Assad after last week's terrorist attack in Damascus and offered to meet him in Lebanon and help with reinforcements. The report has not been confirmed. Meanwhile, Russia accused the US of trying to justify terrorism against the Syrian government and berated Western nations it said had failed to condemn a bomb attack that killed senior security officials.

Israel is preparing for a possible military intervention in Syria in case the Syrian government hands missiles or chemical weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday. "I have instructed the military to increase its intelligence preparations and prepare what is needed so that ... (if necessary) ... we will be able to consider carrying out an operation," Barak said in an interview on Channel 10 television.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday published a report finding that Russian arms imports to Syria contributed to a 580 percent increase in the volume of Syrian arms imports from 2007-2011 as compared to 2002-2006. Russia supplied 78% of Syria’s arms imports in 2007–11. During 2011, Russia continued deliveries of Buk-M2E SAM systems and Bastion-P coastal defense missile systems to Syria, as well as securing an order for 36 Yak-130 trainer/combat aircraft.

Over the past month, video has emerged from the Syrian city of Homs showing killings and other atrocities apparently committed by security forces in neighborhoods that have opposed the government. CNN has obtained footage that is among the most disturbing yet -- about a dozen family members killed in one house in what appears to be sectarian brutality.

Syrian theater actress Mai Skaf has waged an online war against Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah over his support for embattled president Bashar Assad and demanded that he return the 100,000 liras she had collected "for our Lebanese brethren who fled the July 2006 war to Syria." The famous actress, 43, wrote on her Facebook page that during the war with Israel she bought Lebanese nationals "TV sets and satellite dishes to follow what was happening in their country, and bought their children shoes and pajamas.” "Now I am telling Hassan Nasrallah that I regret doing that and I want him to either withdraw his thugs from Syria or give me back my money,” she said.     Hezbollah responded by saying that Nasrallah asked his aides to contact the actress's associates in order to get details about the money she donated and the items she bought for refugees from southern Lebanon during the war. “Hezbollah will return the exact amounts and the items to the a...

It was late in the evening of 1 August 2008 in the Syrian coastal city of Tartous when the sniper fired the fatal shot. The target was General Muhammad Suleiman, President Bashar al-Assad's top security aide. Israelis, the US embassy in Damascus reported, were "the most obvious suspects" in the assassination.

The British government has refused to release documents containing information on the fate of three Israeli soldiers missing since 1982, because it claims the sensitive material could harm diplomatic ties with Syria, The Jewish Chronicle reported.

Iraqi civilians report that dozens of Iranian trucks filled with missiles have recently passed through their country, former minister Mordechai Ben-Porat told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew-language news service. The trucks appear to be heading for Syria. 

Washington - Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, and Symantec are just some of the companies prohibited from operating in Syria under US boycott terms. However, senior executives from these companies were sent on a diplomatic mission to Damascus by the American administration in a bid to goad Syrian President Bashar Assad into abandoning Iran and uniting with the West.

North Korea is exporting nuclear and ballistic missile technology and using multiple intermediaries, shell companies and overseas criminal networks to circumvent U.N. sanctions, UN experts said in a report obtained by The Associated Press.

Hezbollah is running weapons, including surface-to-surface missiles, from secret arms depots in Syria to its bases in Lebanon, according to security sources.